Monday, 3 February 2014

do you like pork belly? I like pork belly, wait... that's an understatement. I LOVE pork belly.
i wold sell my soul for some amazing pork belly (providing that i can have pork belly and eat it too!)

Most of you would think of juicy fatty chunks of protein with golden crisp crunch shards of crackling (yes i drooled while typing that) but behold, pork belly is awesome in many other ways, one of them is this amazing garlic soy pork belly. This is so good that it is worth every single garlic breath you breathe after! no seriously.

It's a real simple dish, no fancy techniques, just some patience and time. This is also good for gatherings and can be prepared ahead of time. Keep it n the fridge till you are ready to serve then drizzle sauce and garish on top.

Ingredients

pork belly

2 stalks of shallots- chopped into thirds

6 slices of ginger

1 tsp xiao sing wine

1.5 kg pork belly

sauce

5 cloves of garlic- minced

5 slices of ginger- minced

1-2 birds eye chillies- depends on how hot you like it

3 Tbsp light soy sauce

1 tsp xiao sing wine

1 teaspoon brown sugar

dash of sesame oil

dash of white pepper

coriander and chopped shallots to garnish.

a saucepan of water big enough to submerge pork belly

a big bowl of ice/ice water

cauliflower sang choy bao

1/2 a head of cauliflower- finely chopped

1 green capsicum- finely chopped

200g button mushrooms- sliced

1 onion- finely chopped

1 cup shredded chicken (mine was left over from an el jannah roast chook)

1 cup couscous

2 cups boiling water

dash of freshly grinded black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp mushroom essence (i got mine from a local health food store, you can use chicken salt or stock powder)

1 head of lettuce, leaves separated and trimmed into cups.

Method

cooking the pork belly

1. bring a pot of water with, wine, stalk and slices of ginger and shallots to boil and put the slab of pork belly in, reduce heat and let it simmer gently for 5 minutes. repeat 6 times or until pork belly is cooked through.

This always reminds me of the cross section of a brain. (too much anatomy!)

2. while pork belly is cooking you can start chopping all the veges for the sang choy bao. Finely dice the cauliflower, onion and capsicum, slice the mushrooms and shred the chicken.

3. prepare the coscous as per packet instruction. i usually put in 2 cups water to 1 cup coscous, a dash of salt, pepper and mushroom essence.

4. Save a couple tablespoon of the couscous and fry off in a small pan until golden brown and crunchy.

6. serve couscous in a lettuce cup with a sprinkling of crunchy couscous

Does the pork belly complement a healthy sang choy bao or vice versa?

7. Once the pork belly slab has cooled, you can prepare the garlic soy dressing and slice the pork belly. As all the knives at home are worse off than sing a butter knife, i couldn't get the pork belly to be as thin a i wanted it to. If you prefer a better texture, feel free to leave it as thick cut.

20 comments:

I love this style of pork belly that can be eaten cold with that drizzle of garlic soy sauce in the summer months like NOW!!! This dish can even be brought to the beach for a picnic! Western style cold cut meats pale in comparison.

Haha yes, you did get my full attention! I do love pork belly and this Taiwanese pork belly recipe sounds so good! I'm leaving for Taiwan very soon and just thinking about it make my mouth water. Haha. This looks so delicious!